Jonathan Rea: “If you thought I was going away quietly you’d be mistaken”

A podium battle and a top-six finish for Jonathan Rea at the French WorldSBK made it one of the Yamaha rider’s best rounds of the 2025 season.

The French Round was the first to take place since Rea’s announcement during the summer that he would be retiring from full-time racing in World Superbike at the end of the season.

His battle in Race 2 to finish in the top-six proved that he still has the desire to compete.

“If you thought I was going away quietly you’d be mistaken! I have that burning passion to compete,” Jonathan Rea told WorldSBK.com after Race 2 in France.

“Of course, competing for the podium is nice, it’s given us a little bit of fight and we can be quite satisfied with our job; but I want to fight at the front and when I got a sniff of that today it was quite nice.

“But I had a bike that enabled me to do that in the beginning; until we lost that front traction I was able to feel good with the Yamaha R1.”

The positive result in Race 2 came from the Superpole Race on Sunday morning where Rea was able to get himself a front-three-rows starting position.

“When I finished seventh, [it was a] great opportunity to get a good start and see what my rhythm was really like this weekend because Superpole wasn’t great for us – I found a good feeling with the bike but we weren’t able to exploit it,” Rea said.

“Found myself in a battle with Alex [Lowes] and Petrucci.

“I think I just got caught a little bit too much behind Danilo because my pace felt good. But, probably naively, I started fighting with Alex for the podium.

“When I went through, I started to get very excited and– not making mistakes, but I didn’t have that rhythm.

“That actually caused us to lose some time to the group behind and, when he got through, it allowed Mickey [van der Mark] and Alvaro [Bautista] to join the group.

“So, it was a nice fight to the end, to be honest.”

There was also satisfaction in the result for Rea because of the way he rode and how he has struggled in the past with the Yamaha R1.

“P6 is really positive for us,” he said.

“To come from where we have at the beginning of the season with injury, disappointments, tough races, but I feel like I’m starting to ride the bike the way it’s requested.

“I enjoyed the track here in Magny-Cours, it didn’t start as well as we expected but it’s finishing strong and it gives us some confidence to go to Aragon now and finish the year strong.”